Charles Birch and John B. Cobb, Jr.'s The Liberation of Life: From the Cell to the Community

"Science teaches us to doubt and in ignorance
to refrain" - Claude Bernard

Liberation of Life is a unique book. Its
combined philosophical breadth, scientific rigor and specificity, and
interdisciplinary scholarship make it one of the very few works to successfully
weave together a micro and macro explanation of life's complexity and
interrelatedness. In an outward movement from the biological to the social,
Birch and Cobb attend to molecular ecology and then move slowly towards wider
issues of sustainable economics as well as social and environmental justice.
Here, they examine a diverse spectrum of topics, including modern technology
and its accompanying myth of "progress," the nature and relations of
market and socialist economies, sustainable agriculture, animal rights, genetic
engineering, and sustainable energy production. Whether attending to the micro
or macro dimensions of existence, their explicit goal is to liberate the
concept and reality of life at the molecular, individual, and population
levels. Writing from a Christian perspective, biologist Birch tries to show how
a better understanding of life's scientific basis can release us from the bonds
of outdated and untenable scientific theories concerning life itself. Philosopher and theologian Cobb tries to
show how new ecological conceptions of life, that are suggested by current
scientific research, both support and expand scientific and religious views of
life, which have been impeded by mechanistic science and dualistic religion.

As the
title implies, the book's purpose is to help liberate - or reinterpret - the
concept of life in all of its dimensions. The authors outline their thesis by
calling for a two-fold liberation of life:

There
is the liberation of the conception of life from its objectifying character
right through from cell to human community, for the concept of life itself is
in a bondage fashioned by interpreters of life ever since biology and allied
sciences began. Secondly, there is the liberation of social structures and
human behaviour such as will involve a shift from manipulation and management
of living creatures, human and non-human alike, to respect for life in its
fullness.

Thus, the
authors are not merely concerned with the theoretical consequences of shifting
assumed paradigms of life in the sciences and religion, they are also concerned
with practical ethical outcomes from such shifts. In other words, to liberate
the concept of life in the sciences and religion theoretically is to liberate ourselves from current paradigms that
impede the flourishing of life in actuality.
For this reason, the book concludes with the ethical considerations of
economic, ecological, and social justice as they relate to worldviews
conditioned by various conceptions of life.

In
seeking to scientifically support and philosophically promote what they call an
"ecological model of life," Birch and Cobb specifically challenge
what they see as the three principal contending models of life: the mechanistic, the vitalistic, and the emergent
evolution models. Their redefinition of life is ultimately aimed at
widening our conceptions of what we consider "alive." Although the
mechanistic model is most antithetical to their proposal for an ecological model, they do affirm its value
in describing structures or elements that exist in relative independence from
their environment, such as, inorganic stones or metals. However, as a method
for understanding and explaining the full multidimensionality of life, the
mechanistic model is limited by its most fundamental premise that organisms and
their constitutive parts are essentially just composites of atoms, molecules,
and other elements. As such, the mechanistic model tries to explain living
organisms through reductionism, breaking down the totality of entities into
simple chemical and biological reactions. Accordingly, organic life is seen by
analogy as a machine, only a more complex one. The scientific and philosophic determinism
inherent in this view excludes any concern for non-human forms of life from the
scope of ethical consideration. Unlike
the modicum of freedom that humans seem to possess, this model sees animals and
other non-human life forms as completely bound by the stimulus-response
reactions that condition their existence. In short, they are viewed as inferior
machines in the hierarchy of life - a view first propounded by René Descartes.

Not
surprisingly, this model poses clear and difficult problems for those who
believe that life should be explained in more rich and complex terms. But, as Cobb and Birch point out, the
alternative models of vitalism and emergent evolution are often no more
illuminating than the mechanistic one they seek to challenge and replace. Since they want to undermine the
reductionism of the mechanistic model, "vitalists have been those who . .
. asserted that the living organism consists of physical atoms and molecules plus another entity of a totally
different nature variously called vital spirit, life force, élan vital and
entelechy."In
other words, while vitalism essentially upholds the view that living beings are
composed partly of atoms and molecules which operate mechanistically, it tries
to transcend a mere physical explanation of life by attributing an additional
life quality to living beings that inorganic entities lack.

In the
early 1900s, Lloyd Morgan attempted to go beyond both mechanism and vitalism in
his book Emergent Evolution. Morgan
argued that several miraculous events were spawned in the course of
evolution: the two most important
miracles were the emergence of life and mind. In contrast to both mechanism and
vitalism, Morgan's emergent evolution theory posited life as inherently
unexplainable.

In
developing their ecological model, Birch and Cobb are concerned primarily with
the fact that vitalism and the emergent evolution models merely point out
mechanism's limited ability to explain life adequately. The two alternatives do little to offer any
further scientific basis for life's constitution. Basing their model on recent
advances in sciences, such as quantum physics and ecology, Birch and Cobb argue
that living things can only be properly understood and explained in the context
of their interactions with all the organic and inorganic entities that
constitute their environment. In this way, we come to see that in the molecular
and ecological dimensions of life there is a fundamental interconnectedness
that conditions the personal, physical nature of the individual, as well as the
communal nature of relationships between individuals. From Cobb and Birch's
perspective, to explain the life of an organism or population without attending
to this principle of interconnectedness misunderstands the true nature of life
itself.